LABOUR leader Ed Miliband has defended his party’s decision to support the government’s pay cuts for public sector workers, and to continue with Tory cuts if the party is re-elected to government.
Miliband tried to say that the only way that jobs could be protected was to agree to wage cuts.
He said it was ‘a hard choice’ but when faced with either protecting jobs or giving pay rises, it was ‘absolutely right to prioritise employment’.
Miliband said yesterday that the party had to show – presumably to the bosses and bankers – it was ‘fiscally credible’.
The Cameron-led government announced in 2010 that public sector pay for those earning more than £21,000 would be frozen for two years.
Then last November Chancellor George Osborne said pay would rise by only 1% in the two years to 2015.
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls supported this policy on Saturday saying that ‘given the economy failing as it is . . . pay restraint is going to have to continue’.
Miliband commented yesterday: ‘In the end there’s no easy choices in government… I think it is absolutely right that we say we’ve got to prioritise employment.’
Labour MP Austin Mitchell yesterday called this policy ‘barmy’ and accused Miliband of ‘weakness’.
PCS union leader Mark Serwotka attacked the Balls-Miliband line saying: ‘Balls’ comments were “hugely disappointing”’, while the general secretary of the RMT rail union, Bob Crow christened them as ‘Labour’s electoral suicide note’.
Miliband concluded yesterday by saying: ‘But then when it comes to the next Labour government, if I was saying to you, “I can absolutely promise to restore this cut or that cut,” well, you would say, “Where is the money going to come from for that? How do you know what you will inherit?”
‘This is absolutely responsible opposition and it is absolutely the right thing for us to be doing at this stage in the Parliament.’
Labour and the Tories have so far propped up the banks to the tune of over £1.2 trillion!
In a speech to the Fabian Society, shadow chancellor Ed Balls made clear that he was nothing to do with socialism and is campaigning to build ‘responsible capitalism’.
He said Labour needed to offer an economic alternative that met the twin challenges of boosting growth now through temporary tax cuts and investment in jobs and delivering reform over the longer term to build ‘responsible capitalism’.
He called this a ‘radical alternative’.
